By Gerald McGill

By late February of 1968 the combination of high humidity and daytime temperatures in the high 90’s made life on board the 82s pretty uncomfortable.

We were on a routine patrol in area 1C about 45 miles south of the DMZ.  It was a pretty boring area, not many boats transiting and very few fishing junks.  My crew asked if we could do a swim call and I saw no reason not to, so I agreed.

We had seen an occasional shark but not so frequently that I felt they were a real threat.  Still, just to be sure I threw a concussion grenade into the water and posted one of our riflemen on the bow with an M-14 as a shark guard. 

I decided I would let two groups of four men in the water for swim call.  About 10 minutes after the explosion, I let the first group go into the water. They had only been in the water a few minutes when what looked like a snake floated to the surface. We were able to recover it with a boat hook.  It was dead.

My guess is that the concussion grenade had probably killed it.  I had one of the crew get our Vietnamese liaison officer.  I wanted to know if the snake was poisonous.  The liaison officer looked at the snake, shook his head vigorously and said, “VERY bad”.  He took my left wrist in his left hand.  With his right hand, he curled his four fingers together to resemble the snake’s head.  Then he cupped his right thumb to resemble the snake’s lower jaw.  He then pressed his fingers and thumb together in a simulated bite and said “Bite.” in English.  He then said, “Dead.”

In as calm a voice as I could I immediately yelled to the swimmers to  get out of the water and back on board.  Once they were back on the boat, we showed them the sea snake lying on the deck and I told them that we had reason to believe the snake was poisonous.  I had the cook put the snake in a bag and put the bag in the freezer.

When we got back to base in Danang, none of the Americans, not even the country boys, knew whether it was poisonous. When we took it down to the Vietnamese Junk Force Base, however, the fishermen verified our worst fears.  This type of snake was well known to the fishermen and they confirmed it to be very venomous and dangerous.

No more swim calls.